{"items": [{"author": "Adrian", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/107275519383484?comment_id=107330312711338", "anchor": "fb-107330312711338", "service": "fb", "text": "Doesn't this remind you of a conversation we had on Skype?", "timestamp": "1318776081"}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103741579182942078941", "anchor": "gp-1318783381632", "service": "gp", "text": "When I help people locally, sometimes I do it for the warm-fuzzies, but sometimes I do it out of obligation. It just has to be done, people have asked me to help, etc.. The danger in classifying local charity as being motivated only out of selfishness is that it gives people an excuse not to do it. I agree that giving a sandwich on the street is high-fuzzies and low-impact, but it's also low-effort. Helping local people in serious distress can require enough effort that the inner-warmth boost isn't enough motivation, but the task should still be done.", "timestamp": 1318783381}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/107275519383484?comment_id=107508282693541", "anchor": "fb-107508282693541", "service": "fb", "text": "In a sense, you're right - if you want to do lots of good, you can't be seduced by what merely feels good. I have this thought when I notice my boss doing some helpful but menial task at the front desk - it's kind, and probably feels productive to her, but isn't the best use of her time.
But I'm not keen on applying the label \"selfish\" to this. Sure, you could construe it as the selfish pursuit of a warm fuzzy feeling; but you could just as easily construe your sort of charity as the pursuit of the intellectual satisfaction that you're doing the right thing, a satisfaction that you happen to prefer to the warm fuzzies.
Tautologically, all human behavior is \"selfish\" in this sense, and so I prefer not to use the word that way.
On one level, this is a quibble; but on another level, I lean towards less loaded language than \"selfish\" because I think everyone should have the chance to pursue happiness and meaning in life. Calling that pursuit \"selfish\" is at odds with my belief that this is a right all humans are born with.", "timestamp": "1318797845"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1318854348075", "service": "gp", "text": "@allison\n You say that helping local people in serious distress \"has to be done\", but do you say the same thing about every person in serious distress? If so, we have more that has to be done than time, money, or effort to do it. I think the right approach is a kind of triage. We should help the people we can who are most cost effective to help, and it turns out these are not local people.\n
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\nIf you still want to help local people because it makes you feel good, that's fine, but if you're doing it because you really think it's one of the most effective ways to do good, I think you're mistaken.", "timestamp": 1318854348}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/107275519383484?comment_id=107810882663281", "anchor": "fb-107810882663281", "service": "fb", "text": "@Ben: I was trying to temper \"selfish\" by calling it \"a very positive kind of selfishness\", but rereading it now it is too strong.", "timestamp": "1318854765"}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103741579182942078941", "anchor": "gp-1318855584489", "service": "gp", "text": "I'm going to keep running with the flooded home example from earlier. I spent a couple hours one Sunday helping clean out destroyed homes after Hurricane Irene. I could not have spent those hours working for money to donate. Its not clear to me that figuring out how to spend that time working toward international aid would have been a productive; I would get a trivial amount of money on the street, and there wasn't enough time to organize something bigger. How else could that time be spent, other than on me?\n
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\nI knew that donating that time to local efforts would do good. I didn't really want to do it, but I felt obligation to do so because it was part of a larger church program. It was easy and obvious. Taking time and effort to plan something myself would have taken away from the efficiency. Perhaps it didn't save a child's life, but it did help people. It wasn't as effective as donating money, but it was optimizing the good done with the resources I had.", "timestamp": 1318855584}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103741579182942078941", "anchor": "gp-1318856009958", "service": "gp", "text": "Also, I'm not denying that there's an element of personal choice to this. One person declaring what is optimal use of time for another seems a little off. Perhaps it's not my skill-set to organize relief banquet-type events or proselytize for international aid. Talents are a type of resource.", "timestamp": 1318856009}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1318860860958", "service": "gp", "text": "@allison\n I've tried to answer this in another post: \nhttp://sccs.swarthmore.edu/~cbr/news/2011-10-17.html", "timestamp": 1318860860}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103741579182942078941", "anchor": "gp-1318862639558", "service": "gp", "text": "All of the options you listed are require high mental energy to accomplish the tasks successfully. What if you only have time and physical energy at your disposal? It's those moments that I propose we should use toward local charity.", "timestamp": 1318862639}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1318865711423", "service": "gp", "text": "@allison\n That makes much more sense; I think I understand what you're saying better now.\n
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\nI have a lot of things I enjoy doing in times when I have low mental energy: dancing, reddit, playing around with musical instruments, reading light books, etc. I also have things I should do that don't require much: dishes, cleaning, stretches, etc. So I don't find myself with a large pool of time suitable for such tasks.\n
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\nIt sounds like this isn't how things work for you.", "timestamp": 1318865711}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103741579182942078941", "anchor": "gp-1318872174151", "service": "gp", "text": "@Jeff Kaufman\n Right now, I don't have a lot of free energy, mental or physical. Sometimes I have one, sometimes the other.\n
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\nOne other thing that came to my mind as I was thinking about this: telling people that their efforts aren't optimal mitigates the warm-fuzzy feeling they experience from doing good acts. Ideally, we'd cultivate those feelings experienced with suboptimal charity and direct them toward or associate them with optimally efficient charity.", "timestamp": 1318872174}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/106120852580068301475", "anchor": "gp-1318874940386", "service": "gp", "text": "I think maybe it's possible that removing/lessening the warm-fuzzi-ness associated with less effective (or even ineffective) ways of helping is actually necessary part of redirecting those feelings towards optimal (or more effective) charity.", "timestamp": 1318874940}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1318940139672", "service": "gp", "text": "@David Chudzicki\n \n@allison\n \n
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\nI'm not convinced it's possible to redirect those feelings. At least, I've not been able to. It's really hard to feel warm and fuzzy about improving the cold chain for vaccines.", "timestamp": 1318940139}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103741579182942078941", "anchor": "gp-1318943790141", "service": "gp", "text": "@David Chudzicki\n \n@Jeff Kaufman\n \n
\nI don't think its hard to feel good about donating money to causes where you can't see the effect. The problem is the magnitude and duration. If you help someone with whom you are in direct contact, the feelings are more intense. Likewise, it usually takes more than a minute to help someone in person, so the feelings last for longer and are easier to remember.\n
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\nI've tried a method to transfer feelings before, though not on charitable acts. It's worked okay for me in the past. As an example, say I really love my family. I think about how much I love them and why. I think about the quirks they have that make me smile, or even the things that they do that I don't like, but focus on how I love them anyway. Regardless, I cultivate that love. Then, when I encounter someone I have a negative reaction to, I can think about those positive feelings, and I end up reacting more positively to that person, and even can appreciate them.\n
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\nI think if we take the time to train ourselves to think about why helping strangers feels good: the smiles on people's faces, the sincere gratitude, or whatever other impact we've seen; then it's easier to feel good about a donation does by imagining its impact, which reinforces the optimal act. Without backdrop experiences of local charity work, even a minimal set of experiences, this kind of transfer is harder. In some sense, this exercise would be \"selfish\" since it would be for the purpose of making the donator feel better about their choices, but if it gets more people to donate more regularly, then it's not really selfish at all.\n
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\nSo, lessening the feelings associated with suboptimal charity isn't bad inherently, but I think it's not good to strip someone of all their warm-fuzzy feelings. It's important to try and replace the feelings with warm-fuzzies from effective charity, even if it's hard to accomplish and results in a net warm-fuzzies loss. To really convince a lot of people about a cause for the long haul requires an emotional component.", "timestamp": 1318943790}]}